Liao Laoqi began to teach his son Huaibao to read and write when he was three years old.This is the rule of the Liao family. Children must "learn to write" from the age of three. This is not because the Liao family is a scholarly family with this kind of family education tradition, but because it is necessary for making a living.The Liao family's ancestral property is nothing but an inkstone and a few brushes, apart from the Sanwen thatched cottage and a few broken quilts.For several lifetimes, the Liao family has made a living by writing some papers on behalf of others on the street. As the eldest son of the Liao family, how can he do without literacy?

This little Huaibao is also clever. At the age of four, he was able to write words such as "up and down, left, right, world, size, gold, wood, water and fire" on Laodao brand cigarette paper with his father's wolf hair brush, and he wrote it very well. look.At the age of seven, he was able to copy in lower case.When I was nine years old.Xiao Huaibao has learned all the commonly used Cambodian post formats.At this time, when Liao Laoqi went out of the stall, he took his son with him. Lao Qi hung the small wooden box with pen, ink, paper and inkstone on his shoulder, and walked with the narrow table on his shoulder; Holding a crooked long bench, he followed closely behind.When the father and son arrived at the gate of the post office in the small town, they first set up the tables and stools, then let go of the pen, ink, paper and inkstone, and then put the tray behind the gate of the post office. After inserting it in the crack of the wall, the father and son sat behind the table.Xiao Huaibao began to grind ink, and used the long ink stick to rotate on the large stone inkstone in circles, and the next moment, black, bright and fragrant ink dried up in the inkstone.At this time, Lao Qi called out: "Bao, it's all right."Xiao Huaibao also stopped, sat and watched Dad's writing attentively, and at the same time traced with his fingers on his lap, and occasionally helped Dad move the paper.If the envelope needed to be sealed, Huaibao stretched out his slender fingers, smeared some paste made by mother from sorghum flour from a bottle, and carefully glued the envelope according to the method father instructed.I encountered some simple invitation posts, such as "please celebrate the Double Ninth Festival" and "please matchmaker for engagement".Liao Laoqi put down his pen, twisted his short beard on his chin and said, "Bao'er, come here!"The father and son exchanged positions, Xiao Huaibao dipped his pen in the ink, first asked the name of the visitor, who was invited, and then with a puff of mouth, he lowered his head and wrote on the envelope and letter paper:

Every time Xiao Huaibao finished writing, the people standing by the table would say: "Okay!" Huaibao's face turned red with shame.When encountering people who come to ask for a post and a couplet, they don't want it right away, so Liao Lao Qi told Huai Bao while he was busy: "Bao'er, write down what this uncle wants to write!"Huaibao took out a book bound with old paper, wrote down what the visitor wanted to write and the date when it was finished, and then accepted the retouching fee. The running fee is not high.Sometimes the father and son kept writing all day long, and the money they earned was only enough to buy two liters of corn, enough to feed the whole family for two days after deducting the cost of paper and ink.Of course, there are also good times, when you meet someone who is urgently waiting to send a letter or a generous and slightly wealthy customer. Meals are often bought by others, or a few biscuits or two bowls of noodles, which saves a small amount of money for meals.There are still better times, that is, the rich households "please write", that is, the wealthy households invite Liao Laoqi and his son to write at home when they have something to do.At this time, the income is much more than usual, and the father and son can eat a few full meals of it.However, there are not many such good opportunities. What Huaibao remembers most clearly is that when he was eleven years old, he went to the home of Pei Zhonggong, a rich man with two hectares of land in the south of the town, to write. You can eat white steamed buns, bean sprouts and pork, and after you finished writing, you got three buckets of bread, which made the whole family eat it for a long time. More importantly, he met Pei Zhonggong's youngest daughter, 姁槁, at that time.

That was the first time Huaibao entered a rich man's house, and it was an eye-opener. It was the first time he knew that people could live in such a spacious house.The Pei family has three yards, the front yard is full of long-term servants, the middle yard is home to Mr. Pei Zhonggong and his wife, and the back yard is home to the old people and children of the Pei family. The room where the two maids live is bigger than his whole family. The house I live in is twice as wide.The writing desk was placed in the room of the two maids.That time, Mr. Pei Zhonggong held a wedding treat for his eldest daughter. There were so many relatives and friends in the Pei family. Not to mention couplets, there were hundreds of invitations.Huaibao was able to officially write at that time, and the father and son had one table and one inkstone, and kept writing and sealing. Of course, in the middle, Liao Laoqi also hinted that Huaibao should slow down, so as not to miss a few full meals. .Huaibao remembered that on the second day after they went to Pei's house to write, he was writing on the red paper according to the "Marriage and Wedding Selection" given to him by his father: "Mandarin makeup and relying on people are like jade, Yan Wan sings together The rhyme is like a harp"; "the double wall is white for a hundred years, and the marriage is a thousand miles of red", suddenly heard a sound of light footsteps coming into the room.Huai Bao stopped writing and looked up, only to see a handsome little girl in pink embroidered clothes standing in front of the table, tilting her head to look at the wedding couplet he had written and put it on the floor, while reading, she looked up and stared. With bright eyes, he asked, "Did you write this for my sister's marriage?"At this moment, Liao Laoqi recognized the little girl as Pei Zhonggong's favorite girl - the little girl and concubine, and hurriedly got up and answered: Yes, miss!When he was drinking tea, he said again: Can you write a copy for me too?You?Liao Laoqi smiled, it's still early. ——I'm a woman and I'm going to get married, why don't you write to me?The cowardice still persisted.Okay, okay, I'll write a copy for you too.Huaibao, you can also write a copy for the concubine!Liao Lao Qi laughed ho-huh.Huaibao just followed his father's words, took a look at the wedding and wedding couplets, and wrote a pair for his concubine: Shuangfei does not envy Guan Juniao, and the pedigree is still alive.The concubine felt that there were too few, so Huaibao wrote it in the order selected by the Xilian: Let's see a lady become a woman, and from then on, the strange man will become a husband.As soon as Huaibao finished writing, the concubine happily ran out the door with two sets of happy couplets.

This is the first time Huaibao has seen a concubine.The innocence left a smart and beautiful impression in his little head.However, it was just a very faint impression, and within a few days, he forgot about her and those two wedding couplets.He never expected that the cowardice would intervene in his life in the future.Years later, when he recalled the past and recalled those two happy couplets, he realized that the second happy couplet was not chosen properly. In the winter when Huaibao was twelve years old, the father of Liao Laoqi, who had been bedridden all the time, was also Huaibao's grandfather, who died.This old man who had written for others all his life died when he was holding a lamp in the dark.Like all the old people who knew that they were going to go far away, the skinny Grandpa Huaibao wanted to leave the most important principles of the world that he had figured out in the world to future generations before he died. He looked at his son and grandson at that moment. Intermittently exhorted: ...you can't always write ... you must find a way to become an official! ...Anything in the world is worse than being an official...As long as a person becomes an official...all the blessings in the world can be enjoyed...you will have...fame...house...women...money...all officials can read There is "Zhuzi Lue", so it is called this.One refers to the general term for the theories of various schools of thought in the pre-Qin and early Han dynasties; one should be an official if you can read and write, and we are only one step away from being an official...if you want to find a way to be an official...official...

Liao Laoqi and Huaibao both nodded with tears in their eyes. As if to prove that the old man's will was correct, the Liao family was pushed into disaster by a lawsuit in the second year.The reason for the lawsuit is very simple. The head of the town office had a new concubine and asked Liao Laoqi to write a happy couplet.After Liao Laoqi finished writing the happy couplet, he hurriedly wrote an elegiac couplet for another bereaved family, putting the happy couplet and the elegiac couplet together.It was also a coincidence that Lao Qi and Huai Bao were not at home when the head of the town office sent someone to fetch the happy couplet.Huai Baoniang was illiterate, so she pointed to the couplets laid out there and said: Take it yourself.I didn't want that person to be illiterate, and more or less dazed, he randomly picked an eight-character couplet and left, and then pasted it when he returned. Don't you know that it was an elegiac couplet, on which was written: Xiuge Flower Remnant Sorrow Follows The crane tears, the dressing table is cold and the dream is full of cuckoos.The director screamed when he saw it, saying that this was deliberately destroying the person's reputation and family, and immediately sued the county court.Liao Laoqi repeatedly appeared in court to defend himself, but the court still ordered the Liao family to pay 30 yuan in compensation.Poor Lao Qi complained everywhere, but the sentence was not changed because the plaintiff was the mayor of the town.The Liao family had no choice but to sell two houses to pay the compensation.Because of this, Liao Laoqi was ill in bed for a whole year.Liao Laoqi got up and sighed to his son Huaibao with tears in his eyes: Your grandfather is right, as long as you have a little connection, you can become an official. Only by becoming an official can you not be bullied in this world...

Huaibao just smiled bitterly when he heard it, thinking who would let us become officials?At that time, he had no idea that a huge change was taking place on the land of China, and an important opportunity was coming to him at a fast pace!